Page 67 of Between Us

There was a lot of full-throated advice and encouragement out there about big, headline-making relationship decisions, Roisin thought, but nothing much about the minute-by-minute management of those choices. A lot of t-shirts exhortingDUMP HIM!and songs with rabble-rousing choruses, designed to be paired with salty margs and red lippie. But far fewer things said about the tone to adopt when his loving parents, Kenneth and Fay, unexpectedly called you on a Sunday afternoon for a speakerphone chat about the progress of the flat’s communal garden they were helping you with. Roisin had gone for the same jolly, bland normalcy she’d deployed with Lorraine. It still felt unpleasantly deceitful. She had to pitch it so she was neither OTT fake-perky or ominously and even discourteously flat.

Gloria Gaynor had nothing for her there; when it came to the moments between the moments, the awkward segues, the grey areas for protocol and the conversations that no longer flowed, you were on your own.

Thus, on the Tuesday evening Joe was due to return, Roisin found herself caught in another miniscule but agonisingfix: jump up to go to the door when she heard him arrive? Or remain on the sofa and wait for Joe to make his entrance? The former felt eager and peculiar – to say what? She’d made it clear she wasn’t much fussed how his trip had gone. (News: J.J. Abrams ‘Bad Robot’ prod co want to makeSEEN, nothing signed yethad been fired off mid-trip, to which she’d replied,Great news! You must be floating.Effusive but drab. Like he was a colleague.)

Standing by the entrance, almost as if in a challenge, felt weird. But the latter felt needlessly belligerent.

After half a glass of red, she twitchily WhatsApped Gina and Meredith to ask their advice about the world’s most pathetic micro-dilemma.

Meredith:

Lock yourself in the loo and shout through the door that you’re having a massive Tom Tit.

Gina:

What if Joe thinks that means another man

Meredith:

OK then ‘a Brad Pitt’

Roisin:

Thank you this has been invaluable

It felt pressured because this was the first moment, albeit in private, that they were a former couple. How Joe acted nowwould forecast the weather to come while they financially, practically, socially, and emotionally disentangled. He had a lot of power in deciding how the next two months of Roisin’s life played out.

Their breaking up, after so long, it was one of those things that happened all the time – but when it happened to you, it was unfeasibly gigantic. Roisin remembered thinking that the words,my dad died,were far too mundane and ordinary a statement, regarding its seismic impact and otherworldly strangeness. This, after nearly ten years together, had some of the same feel.

Roisin settled to a home renovation show where she could try to lose herself in the tricky choice of tiles for the pantry instead. The second episode ofHuntersat stubbornly unwatched: it was deeply inconvenient that iPlayer revealed that fact. Roisin guessed Joe wouldn’t have the neck to complain she’d not bothered.

She did not yet have the stomach for its content.

In the end, as was so often the way, the decision about getting the door was made for her. She heard a car loiter, then Joe bump up the steps and curse as he clearly failed to find his keys. She stuck the television on mute and went to answer.

‘Hi,’ Roisin said, opening the door, heart overclocking. ‘Too much luggage and too many pockets?’

‘Hello. Yep, thanks.’

Joe looked up, his sun-kissed skin again incongruous under Manchester skies. He must have made use of those rooftop bars.

He hoisted his ridged silver trolley case through the door and looked around. ‘Place looks immaculate? Cormac’s stint go OK?’

‘Oh. Yeah. Fine. I kept busy. Had extra days off work,’ Roisin said, in a stupid blurt. She wasn’t ready to talk about that.

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yeah.’

Joe obviously intuited they weren’t the good sort of days off and sensibly asked no more.

‘I’m going to have a shower and change, and then can we have a chat?’ Joe said.

Roisin felt numb. ‘If you have the energy,’ Roisin said.

‘No time like the present.’

Roisin couldn’t read his tone. She got herself more red wine, and after a moment’s thought, fetched the bottle and put an empty glass on the other side of the coffee table.

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